by Nate Ryan, USA TODAY Sports

by Nate Ryan, USA TODAY Sports

KANSAS CITY, Kan. - A sense of resignation was the key to Kevin Harvick's victory in Sunday's Hollywood Casino 400.

And it might be the philosophy best adopted by those who want to follow the Richard Childress Racing driver's tire tracks into victory lane at Kansas Speedway, whose glass-smooth surface is emerging as among the toughest to tame in NASCAR's premier series.

Even though he led a race-high 138 of 267 laps while starting from the pole position for the first time in seven years, Harvick spent much of four days at the 1.5-mile track dissatisfied with the handling of his No. 29 Chevrolet.

Until he had this epiphany: So were the rest of the 42 drivers.

"It existed for the whole field," he said after his third victory of the season moved him to third in the Chase for the Sprint Cup standings, 25 points behind Matt Kenseth. "We knew it would drive like crap in traffic. You just had to accept that the car isn't going to be comfortable.

"It was an interesting weekend."

It was capped by the season's most treacherous race: a record 15 caution flags that chewed up more than a quarter of the race and left drivers squawking incessantly as another wild set of circumstances changed the complexion of the Chase for the second consecutive year.

Kyle Busch (34th) took the most serious hit, falling two spots in the standings and 35 points behind Kenseth after crashing out of his third consecutive race at Kansas, which seems to have become as much of a wild card in the Chase as Talladega Superspeedway.

"That's the worst conditions I've raced in I don't know how long," said Kenseth (11th), who finished outside of the top 10 for the first time in the Chase but maintained a three-point lead over Jimmie Johnson. "This right-side tire was obviously not the answer."

Said Brad Keselowski, who made his first pit stop several laps early: "The world's best drivers don't just wreck on their own. We're getting a little help. It was like a video game slick track. As bad as it gets. We all made the most of it, and that's all you can do."

Virtually every driver had to overcome some form of adversity whether it was runner-up Kurt Busch starting from the rear in a backup car, third-place finisher Jeff Gordon making a miscue by pitting too early or Johnson having to fight through traffic several times for a sixth after getting caught in the pits under an early yellow (a last-lap engine problem cost him a top-five).

Even Harvick had to rebound from two untimely caution flags. The first was for debris (Harvick said it was duct tape) that left him trapped outside of the top 25 after 85 laps.

The second was for a grass fire just outside the track that sent a large plume of white smoke billowing through Turn 1.

"Duct tape and mulch were our best friends today," Harvick cracked. "Yeah, it's frustrating. But luckily today, it all worked out."

Others weren't feeling so sanguine about Kansas' surface, which featured 14 cautions last fall in its debut after a repave.

"It was tough," Kurt Busch said. "We always hope we can have more grip and be able to race side by side and have a comfort level to produce a show where fans want to come, and we see sellouts, and we need to put on a better show. We just have to have Goodyear, the drivers, the teams, the tracks on the same page. We're close, but I think we swung and missed this weekend."

Gordon has been lobbying to change NASCAR's repaving process. ("We're paving these racetracks with what we're paving new highways. It needs to be looked at differently," he said.) But he also conceded that Sunday's action also might have been compelling from another perspective.

"I wouldn't say that these are the kind of conditions that I prefer, because it's hard to really feel the car and you are on that razor's edge," Gordon said. "If we had a little bit more abrasive racetrack and a tire that suited that, I think that we'd see the groove widen out and have a little bit more side by side racing like we used to see here.

"But at the same time, you might not see as many cautions. Sometimes side by side racing and multiple grooves doesn't always mean you're going to have the most exciting race. I think these days we all know cautions make for much more exciting racing, and we certainly had plenty of those."

"That seems to be what everyone wants are wrecks and cautions," Harvick said, turning to smile at his boss, Richard Childress. "Except the owners."